As they drove, Amy listened to Shane’s recounting of what had happened with sympathy and curiosity. It was both similar and different to what she and Ray had experienced, and it simultaneously frightened and heartened her. If Shane had made it through whatever was happening, and had saved a life on top of his own, surely everything wasn’t as bad as Amy had feared. There were always spots of light in the darkness, and she clung to that knowledge with all of her being.
Ray had listened, as well, just as intently as Amy had. He wasn’t listening out of anything except suspicion, however. He was trying to deduce whether Shane had been lying as he recounted his experiences; if he was trying to lull them into false security so he could take the uncorrupted Amy as he had the small, pretty infant Leila.
As soon as this thought had entered his mind, Ray had tuned out of the conversation, which had switched to hometowns and other topics unrelated to the current situation. He analyzed the data, which was something Ray was very good at. He was an expert at gathering information and examining it to come to a correct, or at least an intelligent conclusion. Amy’s safety depended momentarily on how attuned he was to the situation, and any information he could prove to be useful fact for her to take with her.
Shane was uncorrupted, or he was a level of corrupted Ray couldn’t immediately identify. He didn’t honestly believe the other man was touched by the blight, because he felt the same in Ray’s head as Amy did, as the baby named Leila did. The creature wanted Shane just as much as Amy, if not more. With Shane gone, baby Leila would also become fair game for the hunters awaiting the night and the new world of prey they had been born into.
They were driving toward Sam and Laura’s house, so Ray knew that Shane was helpful, or at least was pretending to be. If his story was true, he’d saved a baby’s life, which was no small matter. Too many children were going to be left alone or worse-would be or had already been killed by insane parents as the corruption took hold. Chances were good that Shane had found them for a reason, if only to be Amy’s ticket to potential safety.
He was jealous of the other man, he admitted to himself. Not only was he safe to be around Amy and Ray was not, he was an attractive and obviously stalwart older man and Amy had definitely been enjoying talking with him as they drove to her cousin’s home. If jealousy was the only reason he had to want to find fault with Shane, he needed to step up his game and stop acting like a dick, Ray chastened himself.
“Amy’s cousins are survivalist types,” Ray added to the conversation, as he’d become dimly aware it had switched to the people they were about to meet. “Sam even gave Amy a survival bag as a birthday gift last year.”
“I guess you should thank him for that when we get there,” Shane told Amy, who nodded.
“Oh, I intend to. It may not have helped much yet, but it’s been much better to have it. It made me think calmly when everything started going crazy, and it kept me sane. I knew I didn’t need to freak out, because as long as I could pack up and get to Laura and them, I’d be okay.”
“I think the bag helped more than you know, then,” Ray said. “It was a lifeline of sanity when the world went nuts. And it may become more helpful yet. You’ve already got some good stuff in there, and you’ve added useful things from the road.”
“Like what?” Shane asked, mostly to keep the conversation going, but also because he was genuinely interested in what the kid considered useful.
“We found some Penicillin and prescription Motrin,” Amy recalled. “Ray suggested I put them in the pack. He also had me take a couple of lighters and some easy to carry stuff from a first aid kit.”
“I figured you can never have too much first aid equipment,” Ray added.
“Definitely,” Shane agreed. “And Penicillin is a great addition to a survival pack. You’re lucky to have found it, and lucky Ray knew it would be a smart thing to take along. It’s a powerful antibiotic and I don’t think hospital services are going to be back up and running for a while…”
Ray knew Shane was both trying to clandestinely put him at ease and also to compliment him for keeping Amy safe when they’d been alone. Things could have gone far worse, Shane’s expression said as he caught Ray’s expression in the rearview mirror, and he believed Ray was a good man for making sure they hadn’t. It did put Ray at ease, and he did feel complimented. He was incredibly relieved that Amy would be taken care of, even if they couldn’t reach Sam and Laura’s by the time dark came. It was a weight off his shoulders and a load off his mind that he hadn’t even realized had been giving him a headache.
“I brought some food from the house,” Shane told them. “Nothing open that could have been contaminated, but some bags of chips, some canned meat, crackers, granola bars and a bag of mini candy bars. Help yourself if you want, Ray. I put all the food in those garbage bags.”
“It’s nothing like a germ or a biological weapon,” Ray commented as he pulled one of the bags from the floor and opened it. “No illness, no terrorist attack. You’ve seen several full corrupted. Something has infected most of us, but it isn’t a sickness. It’s alive. It’s sentient.”
“Us?” Shane asked warily. “You mean you’re like the other crazies that I’ve seen?” He looked at Amy. “And you, too?”
“No,” Ray exclaimed quickly, forgetting the crackers he’d been about to see if he could stomach and shaking his head vehemently. “No, no. Amy is uncorrupted. She’s got no touch of the blight, like you, like the baby. I have something inside of me, but I haven’t let it win. It’s fighting me, but I still have control. That’s why I plan to leave Amy before nightfall. These things, they came in the dark last night. I know they’re going to be stronger when night comes again.”
“That’s noble of you,” Shane said. His tone was uneasy, but the hostility in his eyes had receded greatly. “Why is she uncorrupted and you aren’t? You don’t seem much different. It obviously doesn’t have a preference on gender. Race doesn’t seem to play a role. What makes someone prone to corruption?”
“Nothing that I can tell offhand,” Ray answered, and he sounded frustrated by the fact. “As I told Amy, corruption seems as random as the lottery.”
“Not a lottery I’d like to win,” Shane murmured as he maneuvered around a stalled vehicle. There had been far fewer cars on this side of the freeway.
“Agreed,” Ray said. “But it looks like I’m stuck with it.”
“Shitty, man,” Shane said, and he sounded genuinely sympathetic. Ray nodded and his expression was grim.
“Don’t I know it,” Ray said, then turned to stare out the window.
All of a sudden, Ray didn’t feel much like contributing to the conversation anymore. Amy frowned sadly and looked out her own window. Shane maintained a respectful silence as he drove, and baby Leila continued to sleep.
Chapter Eleven
There was something in the attic.
Sam had known as soon as he’d heard the noises that it wasn’t natural settling of the house, or even an animal having made its way into the attic to hide out from the frigid winter weather. The sounds were sneaky, muffled, as though someone was picking very slowly and cautiously through the well-organized collection of dusty furniture, boxed mementos, summer supplies and boxes of donations Laura kept forgetting to take to church.
Gesturing to the enclosed patio, which was warmed by a space heater during the winter and cooled by several powerful fans during the hot months of summer and autumn, Sam ushered the children and his wife that way. He would have them go inside and lock the door. If something happened to him, they could leave via the backyard, double back around the house, get into the Aveo or the truck and drive away.
At Sam’s urging, everyone had kept at least their shoes on, and Sam made motions for them to take and don their jackets, which they’d all draped over their chairs as they ate, while they moved quietly toward the patio. He didn’t know if it was safe to put Trevor with them, but he wasn’t going to risk his son while he went up to explore the
attic. He used one hand to gingerly take both sets of car keys from the table, holding them tightly so they didn’t clink together. He handed them to Laura before she pulled Melissa into the enclosed patio, and she took them carefully to avoid making noise.
Sam hoped whatever creature currently residing within his son wouldn’t reclaim him as soon as Sam stopped touching him. He released Trevor’s hand and pushed him gently through the patio door. No darkness flooded his eyes; no change in his personality was immediately evident. The creature seemed content to sit and wait for the moment. Sam didn’t know if he trusted it, but he did know he didn’t have a choice except to turn away from Trevor and the others and head toward the attic door in the far hallway. He held out his hand toward Laura with all fingers spread out. The gesture meant, “five minutes.” He was telling her not to wait any longer than that. If he took more than the allotted amount of time, she was to take the children and Austin and leave.
Sam walked silently away from the patio and toward the attic, the soles of his work boots making no sound on the hardwood floor. The noises in the attic had ceased, but the silence had the quality of an intruder holding his breath, hoping he wasn’t found out. When Sam on an instinctive impulse turned on a CD player to allow Laura’s latest pop obsession to pour from the speakers, the threat in the attic deemed itself undetected and began moving again. If Sam hadn’t been listening with every on edge ounce of himself, he wouldn’t have caught the surreptitious sounds.
Sam reached the attic door around the same time who or whatever inhabited the space above found the way out. The latch released with a very identifiable click, and the stairs began to descend silently. Sam backed into a doorway, the entrance to Trevor’s room, standing just out of the range of vision of anyone who might possibly come down the stairs. He didn’t have a weapon in hand, and suddenly wanted one very badly.
Nothing came out of the attic.
Tense with anticipation, Sam looked quickly around Trevor’s room for something he could use to defend himself with. A metal baseball bat, the shorter variety made for children, was the only thing Sam found that could be useful in any way. He picked it up and bounced it lightly in one hand, getting a grip on the wrapped handle. He took a deep breath, and left the room.
Nothing had come down yet, and Sam worried he’d been spotted somehow. If whatever was above was lying in wait for him, he’d be at an extreme disadvantage when his head popped up into the attic. He had a moment to weigh the odds of the situation, and then he saw a booted foot on the first stair. Whoever had gotten inside was finally making his way into the main body of the house.
Not wanting to injure a friendly party, but not willing to assume someone who would break in instead of knocking first meant them no harm, Sam quickly ascended the first two steps, took hold of the man’s boot and pulled hard.
The man lost his balance immediately, and Sam jumped out of the way as he crashed down the steps. His face slammed against one of them, sending a gush of blood from what Sam believed was probably a broken noise onto the lightly stained wood.
While the man scrabbled for a hold to prevent himself from falling to the floor, he turned glaring, feral eyes toward Sam and snarled at him. Blood was on his bared teeth, pouring from his ruptured noise, yet he looked more normal than the girl Sam had seen transformed. If he was a victim of the darkness, it hadn’t fully claimed him yet.
“Mother fucker,” the man spat and Sam sensed the shift in him a mere fraction of a second before the creature beneath the skin launched itself at Sam.
Learning from his previous experience, Sam dodged to the left and swung the bat in the same instant. It connected solidly with the man’s temple, and he went down. The shadow thing had missed taking a bite out of Sam, and it receded into the skin of its host when the burly, bleeding man collapsed to the ground, eyes glazed and focus muddled. It had been a good hit.
“Are you alone?” Sam asked in a low voice. The other man didn’t even look at him. Sam squatted down and smacked him. That got his attention. “Hey! Are you alone? If you’ve got a buddy up there, you better tell me right now or the next swing I take at you is going to do a lot more damage than the first.”
The man spat out a tooth. Doing more damage with the next swing would probably leave him unconscious or disfigured.
“Is anyone else up there?” Sam yelled into the yawning maw of the attic door. Sam saw the man twitch out of the corner of his eye, and tapped him on his injured temple with the bat. “Don’t fucking move,” he warned.
“I’m alone,” he said gruffly, wincing from even the slight contact from the bat. “I was just…looking for somewhere to stay.”
“Now why don’t I believe any of the shit coming out of your mouth?” Sam questioned in nearly a nonchalant voice. The man glowered, said nothing.
Sam peered into the darkness of the attic, frowning. He was back to his original conundrum.
“Laura, it’s okay,” he shouted, half-turning so his voice carried to where his family was waiting on his word. “Come back into the house.”
He heard the patio door open again, and the tromping of feet as his family re-entered the kitchen. The man on the ground looked toward where they were and though he could not actually see any of them, his gaze sharpened, filled with acute interest. Sam was uncomfortable with it. The look made him strangely certain that allowing this man to live would be a huge mistake.
“You don’t want to convince me further to beat the shit out of you,” Sam cautioned the man, who seemed to have forgotten about him.
“You don’t scare me, man,” the intruder said with a sneer. “You got the devil in your house; the demon on your doorstep just has to wait.”
“Well, you aren’t on my doorstep, are you, dumbass?” Sam retorted, lifting the bat menacingly. “You’re in my hallway, about to get your skull split open if you don’t can your bullshit.”
Trevor came to the mouth of the hallway, and the man’s interest sharpened and found exactly what it was looking for. Trevor looked at Sam, and Sam saw exactly what he didn’t want to see. The boy’s eyes flooded with black.
“How can you hope to release me if you can’t even get through his house without being detected?” the boy demanded of the intruder, and the derision and authority in his voice chilled Sam. That was not the voice of his son.
Leaving the man on the floor for the more obvious problem with Trevor, Sam reached him and grabbed the boy’s arm. His eyes cleared. The darkness receded.
“Stay by me, Trev, but stay out of his reach,” Sam ordered the boy as they both moved back toward the man on the floor.
“Okay,” Trevor said, and his voice without the previous personality was very small, shaky and scared.
As soon as Sam and Trevor were back by the stranger, the man began to smirk. Sam was about to ask him what his new deal was when a large shape flung itself from the shadowy entrance to the attic. Sam pushed Trevor out of the way, and took the second man’s full weight on himself.
When the first man stood, Trevor casually backhanded him. The force of the hit was enough to send him into the wall. The wall cracked, the pretty floral wallpaper tearing around the man-sized indent.
“You are useless,” Trevor declared, and Sam didn’t have to see his son to know that whatever unique being he had within him had taken possession once more. “How could I complete my purpose saddled with your incompetence?”
The man whom Sam had injured with the baseball bat wasn’t moving. Said bat had been knocked from Sam’s grasp when the second man had taken him down. As Sam regained his breathing, Trevor hauled the second man up by his dirty blond hair and dragged him away from Sam. Sam didn’t think Trevor was doing it for his father’s benefit.
“Trev,” Sam called, even though he knew it was useless. It wasn’t Trevor he was addressing. “Trevor, stop!”
Though an eight year old boy didn’t have the bodily strength to manhandle an adult the way Trevor was doing, the being in control appeared to grant th
e boy far more physical prowess than his host had without the incorporeal assistance. The man howled his refutation of the boy’s intentions, prying at his small hand and kicking and dragging his feet wherever he hoped they could find purchase. Nothing helped.
“We came to help!” he blubbered. “We just came to help!” His claims went unheeded by Trevor, who opened the front door and shoved the man outside. The second stranger’s flat gray eyes were wide with fear and surprise. He panted heavily, and wore an expression of nauseated disbelief. Whatever he’d expected, it was not this.
“Help by sending someone more competent next time,” Trevor spat disgustedly. It was the last thing Sam allowed before he caught up to them and took Trevor by the arm. As expected, the dark dissipated and Trevor turned and clung to Sam, whimpering quietly. He was shaking.
“Trevor, hold onto me around the waist and don’t let go,” Sam commanded the boy, who immediately complied. This left Sam’s hands free. He had reclaimed the bat.
“What are you here for?” he asked the second stranger, not worrying about the first man for the time being. He was still very unconscious.
The man stuttered for an answer, obviously not having expected to have to explain himself.
“It-it told me to come here,” the man finally said, pressing a hand against his chest. “We needed him. They need him.” He pointed at Trevor, who pressed himself more securely against his father’s waist.
“Well, tell them and everyone else that he’s off-limits,” Sam ordered, brandishing the baseball bat threateningly. “I’m going to haul your friend out here, and you’re going to leave. You’re not going to come back, and you tell anyone else you see to stay the hell away from here.”
Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller Page 10
